Democratic ownership

The curriculum walks participants through an examination of the philosophy and practice of cooperation, the meaning of "development" and "entrepreneurship" in their lives, the steps required in starting a cooperative business, and an exploration of two of the most important steps - organizing people into a Steering Committee, and creating a Business Plan. All activities use Popular Education methods, drawing directly on the expertise and insight of participants to guide the learning process...

Community development

The Democracy Collaborative, in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities—is helping to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. Increasingly, this model is being referred to nationally as The Cleveland Model. Other cities nationwide have begun the process of replicating and adapting this innovative approach to economic development, green job creation, and neighborhood stabilization.

Anchor Institutions

Anchor institutions can play a key role in helping the low-income communities they serve by better aligning their institutional resources—like hiring, purchasing, investment, and volunteer base—with the needs of those of communities. The recommendations in this “playbook,” drawn from research carried out to help Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) align around its Anchor Mission, are being published to help other hospitals and health systems accelerate their own efforts to drive institutional alignment with community needs.

Community finance

Since the group's founding in the mid-1980s, LIIF has provided capital and technical assistance totaling $1.5 billion, which in turn leveraged an additional $6 billion, broadening economic opportunity for 1.7 million people. LIIF's investments helped to create 174,000 units of low income and special needs housing, 243,000 childcare spaces, and 72,000 educational facilities.

Ecological development

The accelerating transition to renewable energy is great news, but as this article by Democracy Collaborative Communications Director John Duda makes clear, there's a key question we need to be asking:

The city of Rochester, with Mayor Lovely Warren at the helm and supported by partners and allies across New York State and beyond, has hatched a plan to tap into at least that much to help level the economic playing field for Rochester’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. “It’s about being able to give employees an opportunity to have ownership and to build wealth within their own communities,” says Warren. The plan consists of supporting the creation or growth of cooperatively owned businesses located primarily in the city’s most distressed neighborhoods...

When I ask most people this question, they describe a white man in a suit (or, if in Silicon Valley, maybe khakis and a button down shirt) in a fancy office spending every work day combing through pitch decks, executive summaries, and due diligence and barking tough questions at terrified entrepreneurs.

Flexible savings allow families to manage unexpected financial emergencies and ultimately help families build long-term financial security. However, as this new report from the New America Asset Building Program highlights, flexible savings opportunities are limited, prompting many low-income families to take out payday loans or to incur financial penalties for early withdrawals from their tax-preferred accounts. The authors make several recommendations to broaden the offering of financial services and policies that both permit short-term use and help build assets in the long term.